is a 1955 Japanese

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("common people drama") films with f ...

. It is based on the novel ''Ukigumo'' by Japanese writer Fumiko Hayashi, published just before her death in 1951. The film received numerous national awards upon its release and remains one of director Naruse's most acclaimed works.

Plot

The film follows Yukiko, a woman who has just been expatriated from

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...

, where she has been working as a secretary for a forestry project of the Japanese wartime government. In

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

, Yukiko seeks out Kengo, one of the engineers of the project, with whom she had an affair and who had promised to divorce his wife Kuniko for her. They renew their affair, but Kengo tells Yukiko he is unable to leave his sickly wife. She becomes the mistress of an American soldier as a means to survive in times of economic restraint. Still, Yukiko can't cut ties with Kengo, although he even starts an affair with a married younger woman, Osei. Pregnant from Kengo, Yukiko has an

abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...

. She later hears from Kengo that Kuniko has died from illness. Eventually, Yukiko follows Kengo to his new job on

Yakushima is one of the Ōsumi Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island, in area, has a population of 13,178. It is accessible by hydrofoil ferry, car ferry, or by air to Yakushima Airport. Administratively, the island consists of the town ...

island, where she dies of her bad health and the humid climate.

Cast

Hideko Takamine was a Japanese actress who began as a child actress and maintained her fame in a career that spanned 50 years. She is particularly known for her collaborations with directors Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshita, with ''Twenty-Four Eyes'' (1954) a ...

as Yukiko Koda * Masayuki Mori as Kengo Tomioka *

Mariko Okada is a Japanese stage and film actress who starred in films of directors Mikio Naruse, Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita and others. She was married to film director Yoshishige Yoshida. Biography Okada was born the daughter of silent film actor To ...

as Osei Mukai * Chieko Nakakita as Kuniko Tomioka * Daisuke Katō as Seikichi Mukai * Isao Yamagata as Sugio Iba * Mayuri Mokushō as girl from Nomiya * Noriko Sengoku as a lady of

* Fuyuki Murakami as Makita * Heihachiro Okawa as Dr. Higa * Nobuo Kaneko as Kanō * Roy James as American soldier * Akira Tani as a believer

Reception

Film director

Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most pr ...

saw ''Floating Clouds'' upon its release and called it "a real masterpiece" in his journals.

Awards

* 1956:

Blue Ribbon Awards The are film-specific prizes awarded solely by movie critics and writers in Tokyo, Japan, established in 1950 by , established under the name of the "Association of Tokyo Film Journalists Award", which was formed mainly by film reporters from th ...

for Best Film * 1956: Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film, Best Actor (Masayuki Mori), for Best Actress (Hideko Takamine), and for Best Director (Mikio Naruse) * 1956: Mainichi Film Concours for Best Film, for Best Actress (Hideko Takamine), for Best Director (Mikio Naruse), and for Best Sound Recording (Hisashi Shimonaga)

Legacy

''Floating Clouds'' is Naruse's most popular film in Japan. It ranked number three of the best Japanese film of all time in a poll of 140 Japanese critics and filmmakers conducted by the magazine '' Kinema Junpo'' in 1999. Filmmaker

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...

cited the film as one of his 100 favourites. It was screened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1981, at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in 1985, and at the Harvard Film Archive in 2005 as part of their retrospectives on Mikio Naruse, and at the

Cinémathèque Française A cinematheque is an archive of films and film-related objects with an exhibition venue. Similarly to a book library (bibliothèque in French), a cinematheque is responsible for preserving and making available to the public film heritage. Typically ...

in 2012 and 2018.

Analysis

Adrian Martin, editor of on-line film journal '' Rouge'', has remarked upon Naruse's ''cinema of walking''.

Bertrand Tavernier Bertrand Tavernier (; 25 April 1941 – 25 March 2021) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. Life and career Tavernier was born in Lyon, France, the son of Geneviève (née Dumond) and René Tavernier, a publicist and writer, ...

, speaking of Naruse's '' Sound of the Mountain'', described how the director minutely describes each journey and that "such comings and goings represent uncertain yet reassuring transitions: they are a way of taking stock, of defining a feeling". So in ''Floating Clouds'', the walks down streets "are journeys of the everyday, where time is measured out of footfalls, – and where even the most melodramatic blow or the most ecstatic moment of pleasure cannot truly take the characters out of the unromantic, unsentimental forward progression of their existences." Film scholar Freda Freiberg has remarked on the terrain of the film: "The frustrations and moroseness of the lovers in ''Floating Clouds'' are directly linked to and embedded in the depressed and demoralised social and economic conditions of early post-war Japan; the bombed-out cities, the shortage of food and housing, the ignominy of national defeat and foreign occupation, the economic temptation of prostitution with American military personnel."

Notes

References

External links

* * {{Navboxes , title = Awards , list = {{Blue Ribbon Award for Best Film {{Mainichi Film Award for Best Film {{Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film 1955 films 1955 drama films Japanese drama films Japanese black-and-white films Films based on works by Fumiko Hayashi Best Film Kinema Junpo Award winners Films directed by Mikio Naruse Films produced by Sanezumi Fujimoto Films scored by Ichirō Saitō Toho films 1950s Japanese films